


Salt

by stephanericher



Series: Fins [4]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Merpeople, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-23
Updated: 2018-02-23
Packaged: 2019-03-22 18:42:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13770198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephanericher/pseuds/stephanericher
Summary: The pale dust she’d left on the bedsheets had shone in the morning sun, not like dust caught in the light but almost like a the flash of a fish below the surface of a mountain stream. Or maybe it’s less of an analogy and more of an intentional parallel in Alex’s biology.





	Salt

**Author's Note:**

> happy femslash february (not that gay mermaids aren't appropriate any time of year)

Masako rolls the cone in salt, pink crystals sticking to the brown-flecked off-white of the salted caramel swirl (three scoops, packed tightly). Alex watches from the other side of the glass, fingers drumming on the counter. In the sunlight, she looks off, like she did this morning, when white flakes of dead skin had fallen from her body as she’d sat up, leaving trails on her arm, down her back like a negative image of raindrops on a window. She’d poured what was left of the table salt down her throat, tapping the navy blue sides to get the last bits, and she’d downed five full glasses of water before the air bubbles would have begun to clear the first.

The pale dust she’d left on the bedsheets had shone in the morning sun, not like dust caught in the light but almost like a the flash of a fish below the surface of a mountain stream. Or maybe it’s less of an analogy and more of an intentional parallel in Alex’s biology, her body even when it’s been out of water a week still calling for it, still ready to fall into the murky sea like the beginning of the magical-girl transformation sequences imprinted in Masako’s memory from sitting in front of the TV as a child, sticky-hot summer afternoons when her parents were still at work and her grandmother was over at a neighbor’s house.

It’s in the diner breakfast they’d had the other day where Alex had shaken the salt onto her coffee and Masako hadn’t blinked twice or asked if she thought it was sugar (easy mistake to make when you’re used to living underwater). It’s now, when she asks for an extra cup of salt and a cup of ice on the side, and when she leans over the register to kiss Masako (she knows what she’s doing; she knows by now what’s proper and what’s not and just doesn’t give a shit).

“I’m not giving you a discount,” says Masako.

“I know,” says Alex.

She flashes a grin; it fades quickly and Masako’s caught up again in how tired she looks. The pronounced gibbous moons under her eyes, the flaking skin at her jawline and the rough sprinkling of acne over her forehead. Alex presses her tongue to the salted ice cream, moving it slightly off-center. It’s beginning to melt on the bottom, liquid curling into droplets, still stuck a centimeter above Alex’s fingers on the lip of the cone.

“If you need to go,” Masako says, quietly.

Alex pauses and draws back; salt crystals are stuck to her bottom lip. “I’ll be okay. But we need more salt.”

It’s Liu’s day to close the stand; when Masako finishes her shift Alex is on the dregs of her ice cubes, dipping the last few in salt and bringing them to her mouth. Her fingertips are cold when she takes Masako’s hand.

* * *

“I’m not religious,” says Alex. “This just works better.”

Her voice is nearly drowned out by the bathwater. The kosher salt glints in the jar, reflected off the slant of late afternoon sunlight coming in through the open window, or maybe from that reflected off the overhead light fixture. She digs her free hand in, the salt grating like gravel in a driveway under her nails and fingertips, and flings it into the tub. It sinks and dissolves, and she pulls out another handful, and Masako wonders why she doesn’t pour it in. Maybe it’s some kind of ritual, or a method devised from experience, or the way she’s always done it and it works well enough. The bathtub’s small, anyway. Masako didn’t rent this apartment with mermaids in mind; it was only what she could afford (though even the proprietor of a boardwalk ice cream shop can afford more than this).

Alex shuts off the tap, and Masako’s ears adjust to the empty silence in the air. Alex sets the jar of salt on the lip of the tub. She’s been standing on tiptoe, her default in here; the grout scrapes against the bottoms of her feet, she says. Everything does when your feet are soft, and almost always fins. Alex steps into the bath and then lowers herself, cloaking her body in the saltwater and sighing; her hair fans out behind her head.

Her veins are pronounced against her skin, a bright blue-green nearly the same shade as her eyes against the light brown. Alex reaches for the salt again, grabbing a pinch and throwing it in, like a pot for pasta. She pushes her hands underwater, grabs her hips and winces.

“God.”

Her voice sounds like it’s being dragged through the rough sand a meter or so off shore. Masako sits down on the toilet; the plastic lid bends under her weight.

The transformation begins slowly, like the demonstration the teacher had given in Masako’s high school chemistry class, a spoon beginning to cover itself in gold. Alex’s legs are flecked with grey, then a shinier color that catches the light better than the salt could ever hope to. The scales sprout from her skin, in a way that should be painful, but there’s nothing that looks like a rip, pushing through her flesh but as if it’s no barrier. Her fins look slightly frayed at the end when they form, still grey and not yet green.

Alex’s hand again comes up to the lip of the tub, but she doesn’t reach for the salt. She opens her palm, thin webbing like microfilm crossing the divides near where her fingers meet. Masako places her own hand on top. The grains of salt still stuck to her skin are coarse, a sudden peaks on the slopes and lines and calluses of Alex’s palm.

“If you needed—” Masako starts.

“I was stupid,” says Alex. “I won’t run myself down like this again.”

Masako thinks of asking if she’s satisfied, if she’s going to push herself again, but that’s just the bitter frustration talking when she knows Alex knows better than to repeat herself like this. She can be careless and take chances on the unknown, but not completely reckless, always safely away from the edge—but it’s hard to see that distance when Masako’s so far on the other side, when she’s trying to find out how Alex works while wearing Alex’s glasses, or with her head underwater.

“I’m sorry,” Alex says.

It’s firm, not meant to smooth things over, not something offered as a panacea, the way some people use apologies.

“Thank you,” Masako says.

Alex’s mouth twists into a smile, her tail unfurling above the water before she lowers it back in.

* * *

Alex starts leaving cups of saltwater on the night table, salt canisters on the edge of every sink. A bowl to dip her fingers in when they’re watching television, a water bottle in her bag when she leaves in the morning before Masako, twirling the keys around one finger. She takes baths before she needs them, and sometimes invites Masako in with her, guides Masako’s hand down the line of her tail until she arches her back and tightens her grip. It is a tight fit.

Masako lets the thought cross her mind that they could afford something much bigger on two incomes.

They go out to some dive bar that Alex knows, clearly because it’s made with merfolk in mind. There’s water everywhere and enough sodium to blow five holes in the healthiest of hearts, but they still serve margaritas with sugar on the rim (and the waiter takes it in stride when Masako asks). The lights are dim and the music is just a little too loud and Masako thinks she just might be a little too old for this, except her hand is on Alex’s knee under the table and Alex’s dress is riding up higher on her thighs. Alex raises her eybrows, grinning behind her own drink (even though she’s brushed all the salt off from her thumb to her mouth already). She reaches across to grab Masako’s.

“It’s the same drink; you’ve got your own.”

Alex swipes the sugar off Masako’s rim, and then grimaces when she touches it to her lip. And then she sucks it off anyway.

“Your fault,” says Masako.

“I like that you like sweet things,” says Alex.

(She pushes the drink back across and flags down the waiter to order another of her own.)


End file.
